The ExoMars Schiaparelli module entered the Martian atmosphere at 14:58 GMT (15:58 BST; 16:58 CEST) and deployed its parachute but the ESA now has a nervous wait to see whether it survived its landing.

It is hoped that it has succeeded where the last Mars probe, Beagle 2, failed in December 2003.

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During the descent, the probe was supposed to take 15 black and white images from its onboard camera to record the descent and give ESA engineers vital information for future missions.

The camera was meant to start taking images around a minute after Schiaparelli’s front shield was jettisoned, when the module was about 3 km above the surface with the resulting images covering about 17 sq km of the surface of Mars.

Once it had successfully broken through the atmosphere, it deployed an automated process to slow down from 21,000km/h to zero. This included a heat shield, special parachute and several thruster rockets.

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The probe also has a special crushable structure underneath it that helped cushion the landing.

Schiaparelli’s mission is only a testing procedure for future missions - so the real emphasis was on the automated computer processes that guided it safely down.

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The ESA plans to only operate Schiaparelli on Mars for a few days and it will record wind speed, humidity, pressure and temperature at the landing site. It will also take electric field measurements that may shed light on how Martian dust storms are triggered.

“Schiaparelli is a lander testing our ability and technology to land on Mars. It will prepare us for the next phase, ExoMars 2020, when Europe and Russia will send their own rover to the planet. The lander will report its status during landing and submit images only as long as it is descending," Dr. Daniel Brown, an astronomy expert at Nottingham Trent University, told the Mirror.

Although the little probe will be left to gather dust on the surface of Mars, its mothership will continue to orbit above the planet.

The two-stage £1 billion (1.2 billion euro) joint European and Russian ExoMars mission is equipped to uncover the first clear evidence of past or present life on Mars, if it exists.

The British-designed rover, built by Airbus Defence and Space at its UK headquarters in Stevenage, will drill samples from the Martian soil and analyse them for biochemical signatures of either long-dead or still living organisms.